The Lottery Experiment, July

 Week 28

Should I buy a 4th of July Powerball ticket? No, that was an easy decision.

I decided to give up on the "buy one of every ticket" idea. Instead I'm going to buy according to what I feel like that day. Today I have $26.25 in the Tip Jar so I figured I would go for the $5 second chance ticket. It has a $2500 jackpot but I lost. I did enter for a chance at a million dollars.

Week 29

This week I had $26.55 in the Tip Jar. I happened to look at last week's total and realized I took in the amount I spent on last week's ticket plus thirty cents more. I thought it was a good week money wise but I guess people weren't as generous or clumsy with their cash. I bought the ticket on Thursday again, I'm still avoiding that one guy plus it's summer so the place is crawling with tourists. They have a new $3 with a potential payout of $10,000. I didn't win. The good news is it's a second chance ticket with a jackpot of $5000 so I came home and entered it on line. Other than last month's t shirt win I've been on a losing streak. Oh well, next time....

Week 30

I had to go help out at the station that sells lottery tickets on Monday. The Manager had to run out so he left me at the register. I was tempted to buy a ticket early but I didn't. Now that I think about it I could have spun my lucky coin on the display and bought whatever came up. Oh well, it gives me an excuse to go out for a walk on Thursday morning.

Since I'm not picking tickets based on numbers or signs I've been getting bored with the experiment. I could call it done and just go with "the house always wins" but I said I would do it until the end of the year. To add a little randomness to the game I got out an old dartboard and let it pick my number. The board is divicd up into 20 slots but there are 24 available tickets. Thankfully the board has an outer band, and inner band, a central band and a bullseye, those would be for the last four available tickets. I lined myself up with the board, closed my eyes and threw the dart, and missed completely. Was this a sign that I shouldn't buy a ticket this week? Perhaps I should just call the experiment done and claim I proved that no matter how much you win, you will come out a loser? Instead I closed my eyes and threw a second dart. It landed on the outer ring so that meant a ticket from slot number 21. 

Thanks to clumsy or generous people I ended up with $53.71 in the Tip Jar, and a special thanks to the person who lost the $20 bill. The thing is that it is more money than I plan to spend so I rolled $40 into the Alternate Funds and used the leftover $13.71 to buy a ticket. The ticket in slot #21 is a $3 ticket with a potential payout of $10,000, and I didn't win anything. However it's a second change ticket so I brought it home and entered it on line. The second chance will eventually have a weekly drawing with a chance to win between $50 and $5000. Fingers crossed.

And something interesting, the ticket in slot #21 is the same game I bought last week. Since I'm entering them on line I had to type in the number, last week was ticket 002 and this week the ticket is 004. In seven days the station only sold one other ticket. Perhaps people don't realize it's a second chance ticket and aren't buying it. This could be good news for me, eventually.

Week 31

Monday morning I got a text from the boss asking if I would go cover the afternoon shift at another station, and I said yes. They sell lottery tickets so the question was, do I buy a ticket early or do I wait until my normal day on Thursday. I decided to buy a ticket on a Monday. I sold a lot of tickets so I figured whatever game that didn't sell would be the one I bought, except the only ones left at the end of the day were either the $20 ones I've been avoiding or ones I already bought. I had $21.68 in the Tip Jar so I decided to go with the $5 ticket with a potential jackpot of $25,000 and has a second chance option. I lost again. This month has not been good to me.

Since I already bought a ticket this week I slept in on Thursday.

Week 32

I figured I had been avoiding the one guy for long enough so I would go by on Friday and buy a ticket. The plan was to get everything done on Thursday however first I slept in and then it was suppose to rain in the afternoon so I decided to put my work off until Friday. This mean that I was going to have to buy my ticket on Thursday instead. I had $28.81 in the Tip Jar so I could buy any of the available games. There was a new game I hadn't bought yet so I considered buying it, or perhaps I'd buy the second chance ticket again, I couldn't decide. When I was at the station I noticed one of the them had been damaged and in the past they always seemed to be lucky for me. It turns out that the damaged ticket was the new game I had planned on buying. It was a $5 ticket with a potential payout of $50,000. I checked it and I won $10. This was my first win in quite a while so I was happy. The guy wanted to know if I wanted to buy a second ticket but nope, one ticket per week.

My July Total

I spent $151 on scratch tickets.

$14 on Powerball tickets.

 Won $104

Found a ticket good for a free $2 ticket

Was tipped a $5 ticket.

Got a $4 lottery tip. 

I entered 20 Second Chance tickets on line

At the end of the month I am down $41 in the regular lottery experiment. 

I also have $250.00 in the Alternate Fund

The Art Project

I spent $20 on tickets.

I got one free ticket

I won $3

I'm down $17 but it's for art so....

So overall I'm down a total of $53 thanks to art.

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